CFP: Testimony and Collective Memory in Literature of the Holocaust (11/10/05; 4/21/06-4/23/06)

The Ninth Annual Red River Conference on World Literature

North Dakota State University, Fargo

April 21-23, 2006

This proposed panel will examine the ways in which the writer/survivor negotiates his or her role in narrating the Holocaust. As Charlotte Delbo tells her reader in the headnote to her three-volume trilogy, Auschwitz and After, "Today I am not sure that what I wrote is true. I am certain it is truthful." Thus for a writer such as Delbo, the purpose of testimony is both to convey personal experience and to commemorate silenced voices.

This panel welcomes 250 word abstracts that address questions of personal and collective memory, or which seek to explore another aspect of testimony related to this topic, such as traumatic personal narrative or the place of fiction in the Holocaust testimonial.